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Medals Related to Navigation, Panama, Compagnie Universelle du Canal Interocéanique, 1880, a silver medal or subscribers’ ticket by L.-O. Roty for the Banque Parisienne, artisans in greeting with robed female figure, percement de l’isthme de panama, reverse legend in eight lines, 34mm (Roty Compagnnonage p.89; BDM V, 230; Gaz. Num. 1897, p.131, 2). Extremely fine and very rare (£70-90)

In 1878 the Compagnie Universelle du Canal Interocéanique, headed by Ferdinand de Lesseps, won from Colombia (of which Panama was then a part) the concession to build a sea-level canal through the Isthmus. Work began in 1881, but malaria, yellow fever and the nature of the terrain meant that the project halted in 1887 and the company went bankrupt. After the independence of Panama in 1903, the US government, under Roosevelt, secured the creation of the Panama Canal Zone and work on a new canal, controlled by locks, was started. This opened in 1915